Something Ventured Posts

Alison
McCauley is the Best Selling Author of Unblocked: How blockchain will Change your Business and
What to Do About It.

Why
does blockchain matter? Alison points
out that disruption is no longer a moment in time. It’s a continual state. How
do you understand new opportunity? Set priorities in a complex and
ever-shifting landscape? Prepare for what’s ahead? Alison helps you navigate
the human side of digital acceleration.

In
this episode we discuss the moment Alison came to be blown away by the
potential of blockchain, how it’s like the early Internet…and the surprisingly
large role of women in this industry.

I
also conduct a thorough podcast investigation of whether Alison is Satoshi
Nakamoto. Don’t miss it!

More
about Alison McCauley:

Alison
is founder and CEO of Unblocked Future, a consultancy that helps executives
drive adoption at the forefront of emerging tech. She helps companies
communicate their vision, resonate with stakeholders, and activate communities
for change. She is a keynote speaker who, in addition to spending time in the
blockchain rabbit hole, helps
teams to educate and drive adoption in their markets at the front edge of
innovation in IoT, robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and
other developing technologies.. A social scientist by training, she spent her career studying the
intersection of human behavior and emerging technology, with 20 years of
consulting to technology-first startups and Fortune-500 companies across
industries including healthcare, education, telecommunications, energy, retail,
finance, hospitality, and manufacturing

Keller Fitzsimmons is the author of Lost in Startuplandia: Wayfinding for the Weary Entrepreneur. She gives lie to the idea that entrepreneurship is a thrilling, lucrative adventure. All is great, of course, until things go horribly wrong. “As crisis after crisis hits, even the most seasoned founder can get disoriented. Whether you’re in the throes of business woes or just getting into the game, E. Keller Fitzsimmons has written a field guide outlining the terrain to help you avoid getting Lost in Startuplandia.”

Keller is a serial tech entrepreneur, artist, and mother of two. She
is the cofounder of Custom Reality Services, a virtual reality production
company whose first two projects, Across the Line (2016) and Ashe ’68 (2019),
premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Keller is the recipient of the
Silvertip PwC Entrepreneurship Award and Speech Technology’s Luminary Award.

Her work has been published by Network Computing, InformationWeek,
and Inc. An active angel investor, she serves on the technology committee for
BELLE USA, a venture fund that invests in women-led startups. Originally
trained as a classical archaeologist, Keller holds a master’s degree from
Harvard University.

In this podcast Keller discusses a wide range of topics, including losing her ability to read (before becoming a best selling author). She discusses the surprising prevalance of anxiety, depression and suicide in Silicon Valley.

Adriana
is the Founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, a San Francisco-based non-profit
organization that empowers women in the tech industry across the globe. Before
founding Girls in Tech, Adriana served in executive roles at Ogilvy &
Mather, Interpublic Group of Companies, Social Gaming Network (SGN), and
SecondMarket. She has been named one of
the 20 most influential Latinos in Technology by CNET, among other awards.

She
is author of the book Tech Boss
Lady: How to Startup, Disrupt and Thrive
as a Female Founder.

In this episode, Adriana charts the influence her immigrant grandparents, and entrepreneurial parents had on her. She shares her early experience with Silicon Valley’s unwelcoming male culture, and how she came to create the global enterprise that is Girls in Tech. She discusses how sexual harassment in Silicon Valley has – and hasn’t – changed. From roller skating to balling up stress like a travel t-shirt – this episode has a bit of everything.

Before
becoming a venture capitalist, Anne was a tech company co-founder, a private
company CEO, and public company executive. She built Military.com with previous
podcast guest Chris Michel, and was CEO of Zinch before it was acquired by
Chegg. At Chegg she had P&L
responsibility as the company became public, with a value over $1 billion.

In this episode, Anne shares her journey from Harvard Business School, to Silicon Valley, and her path to becoming a public company executive to her latest role as a venture capitalist at Village Global.

After attending the University of Illinois, Chris Michel began his career as a Naval Flight Officer, flying aboard P-3 Orion “sub-hunters”.

Today, he is a photographer, chronicling Silicon
Valley and the World. His photography has taken him from the edge of
space, to the North and South Poles and everything in between. Chris’s
path from the Navy to photographer was not a straight line, and in this podcast
you’ll hear his story.

In this wide-ranging discussion we talk about how
Chris made it from the Navy to Harvard business school, where he met his
business partner (and future podcast guest) Anne Dwane. Also covered are
his path to founding two Silicon Valley companies, and his struggle to guide
them through difficult times.

Finally, we discuss Chris’s advice on how to think
about structuring a career and life.

Julian Guthrie is a journalist-turned-author, covering such topics
as Larry Ellison’s quest for the America’s Cup, and the new age of private
space exploration. She gravitates to tales of underdogs and innovation, and her
latest book is no exception.

“Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon
Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime” is the story of 4
women: Magdalena Yesil, Mary Jane
Elmore, Theresia Gouw, and Sonja Hoel Perkins.
Each of these rose – against the well-known odds of Silicon Valley – to
the top of the game.

Well before “me too” these 4 women juggled work and family, overcame
unequal pay, and faced the sexist attitudes prevalent in male-dominated Silicon
Valley. Nevertheless, they rose to
rewrite the rules of an entire industry.

Each story is amazing on its own. Magdalena Yesil, came from Turkey
with $43 to her name, and would go on to help Marc Benioff build Salesforce.

Mary Jane Elmore went from the cornfields of Indiana to Silicon
Valley and landed at the storied venture capital firm IVP – where she was one
of the first women in the U.S. to make partner at a venture firm.

Sonja Hoel Perkins, a Southerner, became one of the first women
investing partners at white-glove Menlo Ventures, and invested in McAfee,
Hotmail, Acme Packet, and F5 Networks.

In this wide ranging conversation, Julian shares her experience in writing this book, and previous books including “How to Make a Spaceship,” with a foreword by Richard Branson and an afterword by Stephen Hawking, and “The Billionaire and the Mechanic,” about Larry Ellison. We also discuss the current state of sexism in Silicon Valley, her predictions for the future, and the in-the-works adaptation of her book for television.

Charles Hudson is the founder and Managing Partner of Precursor Ventures, one of Silicon Valley’s hot seed stage venture firms. He was previously at Uncork Capital, the storied seed venture firm founded by Jeff Clavier. Precursor is a classic seed stage venture firm investing in founders they believe in.

Before
becoming a venture capitalist, Charles cofounded Bionic Panda Games, and held
senior business development roles at Serious Business and Gaia Interactive.

Also
– he went to Stanford. Twice.

In this episode we discuss a range of issues including what it’s like to be a black VC in a mostly white industry, how he made his way to venture, what it’s like working at In-Q-Tel, and why he left a hugely successful VC to start his own.

Michael Tchong has been called “the most influential trend-spotter in America”. He is a top-rated innovation speaker, adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, trend forecaster and author of “Ubertrends — How Trends And Innovation Are Transforming Our Future.” He heads up incubator Ubercool Innovation and is the founder of four disruptive startups, including MacWEEK, Atelier Systems, CyberAtlas and ICONOCAST, all riding early market waves.

In this podcast we discuss “Ubertrends” — his proprietary framework of massive waves that are reshaping global human behavior. In this podcast, Michael and Kent discuss the trends that are shaping the future — from “time compression” to the to the ‘rise of women’ — we cover them all.

The full set of trends discussed includes: Digital Lifestyle — Marriage of Man and Machine; Fountain of Youth — Rejuvenating Body, Spirit and Environment; Generation X-tasy — Been There, Done That; Time Compression — The Acceleration of Life; Unwired — Untethered and Unfettered; Casual Living — The Evaporation of Decorum; Voyeurgasm — I Like to Watch; WAF (Woman’s Acceptance Factor) — Ascent of Woman; Innovation — Reinventing Business and Life

More about the book: Ubertrends — How Trends And Innovation Are Transforming Our Future is a graphic and eye-opening exploration of nine disruptive forces that are shape-shifting society. As these massive waves crash into the future, they leave many subtrends in their wake while leading to many cultural value changes. Society’s permanently altered behavior provides ready context for how the future will evolve

Scott Kupor is the managing partner of famed venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm with more than $7 billion of assets under management that sits at the beating heart of Sand Hill Road. Sand Hill road is, of course, the physical center of the venture capital industry – the greatest wealth-generating machine in the world. So…Scott is at the center of the center of the global venture capital industry.

In his new book — Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It — Scott covers a range of topics critical to any founder: Why VCs invest in particular stages, the key skill for raising venture capital, and what happens when things don’t go so well.

Ellen Pao is CEO of Project Include and author of the book Reset:
My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change. Her
book looks at power in the tech world – and why so few women and people of
color hold it.

She famously sued an elite venture capital firm for sexism, and in
doing so set off a national conversation.

As CEO of Reddit, she waged one of the first highly visible battles
against Internet trolls – a topic which has since exploded as big tech
companies come under heavier scrutiny.

In this wide-ranging conversation, we cover a range of topics. From Ellen’s experience litigating against a
powerful venture capital firm to the current state of diversity in Silicon
Valley she tells her story.